Page 31 - Food&Drink Business magazine September 2022

Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC), Australia’s food and grocery manufacturing sector is under pressure from declining profitability, partly due to stagnant capital investment and low innovation.
Food is the largest manufacturing sector in Australia and identified a priority industry for the country, expected to grow to $230 billion by 2030. The next biggest sector is primary metal manufacturing, which has an annual turnover less than half that of food and grocery.
Growth can be particularly challenging because it is a margin-constrained business impacted by economic conditions, weather, and skills availability.
Wong says this is where Plex can make a real difference, delivering value to manufacturers in high-volume, highly repetitive processes while helping them comply with regulatory requirements and meet consumer expectations in areas like product quality, safety, and sustainability.
The AFGC called out the sector for its declining productivity growth caused by the lack of investment in the latest production technologies.
A 2021 report by the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology found, “The industry is falling behind the efficient production frontier compounding the weakened competitive position.”
SCALABLE, MODULAR SOLUTION
The good news is that solutions exist and can be quickly implemented. Plex, for instance, does not require major investment in hardware or IT infrastructure. “Plex is modular and scalable – it grows with you,” says Wong.
“Using Plex for food and beverage manufacturers and processors is like moving from DVDs to a streaming service. It opens up these technologies to smaller players, because they don’t have to invest in large up-front costs.
Plex can make a real difference, delivering value to manufacturers in high-volume, highly repetitive processes.
PROCESSING TECH
“You can select the components you need – such as a quality management system (QMS) or monitoring, and can evolve to a full MES later. It works for a business of any size, any amount, any scale. The software grows with you, including the pricing,” says Wong.
“New functionality is constantly being added, and because it’s a modular system, it doesn’t take everything else offline to perform an update,” says Wong.
He adds that being cloud- based makes software like Plex easy to keep updated with customer-drivenfeatures. ✷
Expertise - Passion - Automation
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www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | September 2022 | Food&Drink business | 31